I've been shocked at how little national attention the mess in Sarasota has received. Here we have as clear a demonstration as we're ever likely to see that warnings from computer scientists about the dangers of paperless electronic voting are valid - and most Americans probably haven't even heard about it.

As far as I can tell, the reason Florida-13 hasn't become a major national story is that neither control of Congress nor control of the White House is on the line. But do we have to wait for a constitutional crisis to realize that we're in danger of becoming a digital-age banana republic?

"In danger of becoming..."?!! Okay, it's Thanksgiving weekend, so we'll just be thankful Krugman has decided to finally notice.

He also notes the concerns about the very partisan (natch) Prof. Alec Yasinsac whose been placed in charge of Florida's state investigation despite having "made an appearance on the steps of the Florida Supreme Court during the 2000 recount battle wearing a 'Bush Won' sign," as Krugman reports.

Sadly, I think this incident illustrates that this columnist is willing to embrace whatever circumstances and appearances serve his message with no regard for whether they are legitimate.

While we certainly hope that the Jefferson/Rubin evaluation/hopes end up being the correct ones, we're not sure they are keeping in mind the necessity of even the appearance of impartiality here.

If Yasinsac's group finds trouble in the machines, great. It can be said that even a tream led by a Republican partisan agreed the machines were to blame. On the other hand, if Yasinsac's group concludes there was no problem with the machines, the analysis will receive no confidence from the general public...where such confidence is much needed right about now.

Yasinsac should recuse himself from the team of analysts for exactly that reason, even if the rest of his team at Florida State University --- whom Rubin regards as excellent --- stay on the job. The same is true, and for the same reason --- as we discussed the other day --- for David Drury, who is also on the team, even though he is the man responsible for certifying these paperless ES&S touch-screen systems in the first place for the state of Florida. A "machines worked fine" conclusion from the team, as long as both Drury and Yasinsac are on it, will be regarded as partisan and/or self-serving. Whether it actually is will be completely beside the point.

Americans can be grateful that Sarasota County is in Florida and not in Montana or Virginia.

There's nothing wrong with Sarasota, a lovely place. But if the voting snafus in the contest for Florida's 13th District had hung up either of this year's two closest Senate races, we still would not know which party had won control of the Senate.

Supporters of new voting technologies have been patting themselves on the back, saying there were no big voting problems this year. Let them go to Sarasota.
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If you believe that these machines operated properly, then you must also believe that I missed my true vocation as an NBA center.

Imagine if 18,000 votes had just disappeared in either of the key Senate races. Or imagine a presidential election in which the electoral votes of Florida were decisive and the state was hanging in the balance by --- to pick a number that comes to mind --- 537 votes. And, by the way, in 2000 we could at least see those hanging and dimpled chads. In this case the votes have --- poof! --- simply disappeared.

He goes on to argue (correctly) that "Sarasota is the canary in the electronic coal mine."

While we might quibble that there is a bloodbath of dead canaries which have long been littering the electoral landscape, we'll shut up today, and again be thankful that someone with a voice at the Washington Post seems to have finally noticed any of this stuff we've been running around with our hair on fire about for the last two years.

Dionne goes on to note another point we've made just once or twice ourselves in the past (emphasis ours)...

If the taxpayer-supported companies that sell this equipment are not willing to be 100 percent open about how their machines and their programming work, they should not be allowed to record and count the people's votes.

And finally, he closes by pointing to the Supreme Court's earth-shattering, and then ever-since-ignored Bush v. Gore decision from 2000:

"[h]aving once granted the right to vote on equal terms, the State may not, by later arbitrary and disparate treatment, value one person's vote over that of another."

Bad news, E.J.. It's been happening all across the country ever since. And despite our best efforts, nobody --- not the courts, not the politicians, not the media --- has been willing to do a damned thing about it.

Let's hope that changes. Even if we won't be holding our breath until it does.

Sarasota already was the proverbial "canary in the coal mine" in the presidential election of 2000 which gave GWB the presidency...nothing new here...money talks, and BS walks in that town of the haves and have mores. The perfect location for the likes of Buchanan and Harris - a matched pair, indeed.

Since the american people were unaware that the canary died in the coal mine there in 2000, the next canary died in Ohio in 2004 (thanks to a conflict of interest between Ken Blackwell as State Director of Elections while he headed the Bush/Cheney Campaign where Diebold was a major contributor...conflicts of interest, anyone???)...Still, the people ignored it and hoped it would go away....delusion can be enticing, can't it?

Still in denial but waking from the american dream somewhat with the rumors of easily tampered EVM's all over the country, the public became suspicious but it still missed the forest for the trees. WITHOUT A VERIFIABLE PAPER TRAIL WHICH REFLECTS BACK TO THE BALLOTS (AND NOT THE INTERNAL AUDIT OF THE TOUCH SCREEN MACHINE), NO ELECTION IS SAFE FROM INTENTIONAL VULNERABILITY IN THE FORM OF GLITCHES, ERRORS, AND DOWNRIGHT CRIMINAL ACTS.

We've had 3 canaries die in the voting coal mine, folks....it's time to wake up and smell the coffee...or the next canary to die in the coal mine will be our very own "canary of democracy"! And, that's a given if things do not change and change fast!!

Concur with Brad. Yasinsac's appointment does not pass the smell test, however much Rubin and Jefferson like him. Really: there was no one else for the group?

Plz excuse my broken record: but machine-free handcounted paper ballots, imo, is the only way out of this mess. [btw, I'm old time information/control systems engineer on leading edge projects, civilian and military.] I understand that there are serious problems to doing without the machines; but there are solutions in prospect.

Having read your book and followed this blog for a while, I rarely disagree with you. But I have to wonder in this case whether your allegiance and friendship with Prof. Yasinic is blinding you to the IMPRESSION that his involvement gives to those of us who see his actions in 2000 as being supportive of election theft.

You learned a lot about the potential for issues like that to affect one's credibility through your perceived connections with VoteHere, a company with whom you had no tangible relationship. Now imagine how different the perception would have been had you acted as a lobbyist for that company, complete with pictures of Avi Rubin wearing a VoteHere patch on his jacket standing on the steps of the Capitol. Horse of a different color, wouldn't you say?

When I, as a voter, think of the people holding "Bush won" signs during the recount, my mind automatically goes to the thugs that Tom DeLay and the RNC paid to go down to FL and intimidate officials into stopping their recounts. I think of people who were photographed staging fake riots, like our current UN Ambassador, John Bolton. I think of people who don't give a rat's ass about the will of the people. I think about people who cheered on the subversion of democracy so that their guy could win. And I think about the 6 miserable years living under an administration that facilitated the environment that leads to inauditable e-voting machines, all manner of election theft, loss of civil liberties, and a war that is robbing this nation of our standing in the world, our national treasure, our military, and killing thousands of innocent people.

So when I hear about your friend Yasinic publicly demonstrating with a "Bush Won" button, excuse me if I don't find any sympathy for the repurcussions it may be causing for him now.

Thank you for staying on this, Brad. It is exhausting and infuriating the never-ending sleaze and where do they find so many dirty people with no conscience to defraud the American people of our vote and our democracy.

People are getting energized by the brazeness of the thefts and we WILL STOP THIS THREAT TO OUR DEMOCRACY and freedom from "elites" and their attempts to destroy America.